journey i had was down to London to go backstage for Franz Ferdinand when they were first on the bill at the nme tour. I had been up all night at a techno club with my other friends in Edinburgh - it felt odd but great, two completely different worlds.

I'll be honest and say this has bothered me quite a bit in recent times.

It wasn't until the other day that I added a new subconscious prejudice to the list as well - language. The overwhelming majority of my CD collection is Anglophonic, even when it's made by people who aren't young-ish white boys...

It's obvious that these things shouldn't be barriers and - although we should recognise the inevitabiility of this state of affairs, for anyone of any gender, of any age, of any ethnicity - I think if you really care about music you should be trying to move out of your proverbial "comfort zone". To this extent, yes, I think it's significant.

Just how we go about doing this without falling prey to allegations of tokenism is another thing entirely.